Ministry Showcase: Imperishable Seed (pt. 1)

This week I will be doing a showcase of my friend Emily Arndt's newly launched ministry: Imperishable Seed.  Emily has applied to and just became a long term missionary for Christian Veterinary Missions (CVM) in the Karamoja region of Uganda.  I have been in contact with her since the beginning of this year and we have talked up great things about going into His service... so it is my honor to be given the opportunity to showcase her technological choices.  I also take no credit for any of her choices... I'm sure I might have inspired maybe a few choices but she needed little help with her ministry as she was making smart choices already.  Some of these topics also have not been covered in the blogs but we can talk about these as the time come.  So for the first part of our showcase... let's talk about:

Web Presence

Situation

Emily's mission will most be in the back country, or so to speak.  She will be mostly doing field research helping the locals tap into their God given indigenous knowledge.  The people that she is with aren't hopping on computers all the time, if at all.  Internet is sparse, if at all.  She'll mostly be working with office productivity software like word processing or spreadsheet on any computer that she will bring.

Analysis

Emily is in a situation where she will need mostly support from the States.  She doesn't have ready access to the internet nor does the people she minister to need/have access to digital media.  She will mostly need technology that she doesn't have to monitor to help her stay connected via proxy to her community back in the States and all over the world.  She will, however, need means to communicate via the web on occasions to update the rest of the world on what she is doing.

Readily Available Tools

Currently she has the technology needed to receive sponsorship through CVM.  

Web page

She will have a page to herself shortly but a taste of what it looks like here's her partner's page: http://www.cvmusa.org//Page.aspx?&pid=988&frsid=39.  For her purpose this page is more than sufficient as it states everything in a nutshell with a bio, projects and prayer request.  Due to her association with CVM the visitor can find out things about the mission like values and such that she shares on the CVM general "About" page.  

Sponsorship Vehicle

CVM also has a convenient donations page on their website, with Emily as the first recipient on their list! Actually that's because her last name starts with 'A' (https://www.cvmusa.org/sslpage.aspx?pid=1700&frsid=39).

Communication

Another thing that CVM gives her is the ability to keep a mailing list and ability to send updates through that channel. This helps her connect herself to her ministry partners not just in sending them updates but lets the partners stay in touch with CVM in general.  

Another great thing that CVM does for Emily is that they can expose her to others who are interested in helping CVM in their missions.  This is a great tool because the affiliation both gives her an immediate credential of values as well as the tool of targeting potential partners in a very specific interest group.

Things that she is doing herself

The great thing about Emily is that she is very technologically well versed when she joined CVM.  She was already on Facebook and blogging regularly.  But due to her new anticipated task in life she has either added venues to her presence or revamped her existing venues to support her new adventure.

Facebook Page

Since Emily is already on Facebook... why not add a page for her ministry?  Here is her page: https://www.facebook.com/imperishableseed39.  This page is very well put together as she states her affiliation and ministry right upfront with all the visuals.  She has CVM and CLIDE (her ministry branch) logos right on her cover page.  She also visually shows her ministry in both cover photo and profile photo.

Another (amazing to me) thing about her page is that she has populated her timeline with her entire story of going into ministry.  I will admit that I probably will never put in the time necessary to do what she has done. This gives her a very personal touch and gives anyone with a heart for missions a really good reason to sponsor her.

Overall I think she did a great job of starting this page out.  She uses both visual, verbal and graphical means of communicating her ministry.  I would not expect her to put in as much time once she gets sent out as she will have sparse connectivity once she goes out there.  So expect spurts of communication from her page.

Blog

Emily already has a blog, on blogspot, for a long time: http://jesusdied4you2.blogspot.com/.  Her previous site had all kinds of things going on and not very specific in purpose... just your normal everyday blog.  She has since rebranded it to become part of her ministry with her banner, a veterinary themed background (though stock, better choice) and focused the page to ministry, though most likely unconscious.

This page is nice in that it's not so official as her CVM page that she will have but a more personal look at ministry from the ground level.  This, again, will not be updated regularly but will have spurts of posts, like most blogs anyway... and thus this fits her ministry needs perfectly.